>> who was the woman who hugged him at the end? >> his wife. >> what is her role in terms of writing of the book? >> she's everything. >> continue watching booktv all weekend long for more nonfiction authors and books as we mark our fifth -- our first 15 years on the air. >> next o on booktv, work or spotted scott anderson talks about t.e. lawrence and the involvement of britain, france, russia and the u.s. in the middle east during the early 20th century. this is about an hour 20. >> thanks very much. thank you, sherman, for that introduction. spent what we really do is give the own -- [inaudible] >> i'll just talk briefly on

that. i was raised overseas. my father was with a.i.d. in east asia so actually grew up in asia. really didn't spend any time in the state states until i can gea good high school as a teenager. i think having, with that background, the idea of having a conventional career and based in the united states was little hard to imagine. with my brother, also, jon lee anderson. we both tried to figure it how we could get back overseas and stumbled into journalism as a way to do that. john lee and i get two books together, inside the league which sherman mentioned, and war zone which was an oral history from five different wars taking place around the world in the mid 1980s. and in the years since then, along with writing books, both nonfiction and novels, i've written -- i write primary for

"the new york times" magazine. usually in war zones but almost always internationally. from the time i spent in the middle east, what comes up, when you of her have an insult conversation with somebody in the middle east invariably go back to the decisions that were made almost 100 years ago now. the decisions, by most accounts the mistakes that were made at the end of world war one, in addition to that i saw the movie lawrence of arabia as a kid. was utterly fascinated by both him and the desert. and so about five years ago i decided i wanted to do a book on lawrence of arabia of looking at him as a prism through which to understand what happened in the middle east at the end of world war i, and why it is the way it is today. so i'm going to primarily talk

about the middle east, but to understand what happened there in world war i, you kind of need to know a few things about like our overview about the war in europe, or how the war even came about. most historians looking at world war i now, it's what is seen as a perfect storm of stupidity that all kind of came together and created this worldwide catastrophe. but, in fact, you can really divide it up into four distinct perfect storms of idiocy. and the four are what led up to the war, the diplomatic maneuvering that collapsed and led to the war. the second being the military conduct of the war. the third being, the political considerations that occurred during the war, and then the fourth, the peace afterwards.

the paris peace conference. so i'm going to present talk about the first three which kind of brings us to the middle east. one of the first misconceptions, general misconceptions, about world war i and the imperial powers in europe battling each other is that it was about the maintaining of empire. it actually was, and it's an understandable misconception to have considering that world war i was the graveyard of empire. and six great empires of europe, for disappeared completely, germany, austria, hungary, the ottoman empire, and sars russia. and the two that survived and were for want of a better word, victor's, britai britain and fre were britain and france are so weakened within 30 or 40 years they were finished also. but, in fact, what it really was about with the expansion of empire. again, it seems almost ludicrous to imagine that now but how that

came about to understand why this is the expansion of our yet to look at what happened around the world, the 30 or 40 or fight to that. specifically the scramble for africa. in the 40 years prior to the outbreak of world war i, all of africa was subjugated and colonized why europe. they were able to do so largely through the incredible advance made in communicate, transportation and most specifically weaponry. to give one example of the battle to in sudan, in 1898, the british army lost, in one morning, 47 dead while killing 10,000 of the enemy. the reason they were able to do that is because the enemy were on horses carrying spears and they had machine guns. especially with the scramble for africa, it really confused all

of europe, all the european empires with this amazing sense of cultural and racial superiority. and so as they jockey for position locally in europe, they were also looking where do they go next. so what was left in the world. east asia have been colonized. africa had been colonized to the americans were not going to let europeans into the western hemisphere in any significant way because of the monroe doctrine. so what was left was essentially the middle east. and the ottoman empire. by the outbreak of the war in 1914, the ottoman empire had been in a long state of eclipse. the different european powers -- every european power with the exception of germany had taken turns snatching bits of the ottoman empire. the french had grabbed rocco.

the british grabbed in the. the russians had moved into what was the former ottoman lands of southeastern europe. so this was going to be the place where the next generation of colonies and the building of empire. but what happens when the war started is they very quickly realized -- very few people, the war started in august 1940. most people thought the war was going to be over by christmas, but what they forgotten to take into account is one thing the machine gun arab tribesmen when they're armed with spears, war becomes a very to begin with the other side also has machine guns. what happened in the first month of world war i was unparalleled. the french and the first three weeks of the war suffered over a

quarter million casualty. britain which, over the previous entry to have fought over 40 wars, mostly colonial wars but also including the crimean war and another war, over the previous 100 years the british lost less than 40,000 soldiers in combat. in the four years of world war i they were losing 20 times that number. the most amazing statistic i came across was that in just a two-year period between 1913-1915, 1915, you're one year in the war, the life expectancy of a french mail went from 50 years of age to 27. so this was the second perfect storm of stupidity that i was talking about, which kind of led to the third. so in the face of such an absolute disaster for all parties concerned, it would seem reasonable if they were then set

about try to figure out a way out of the mess. this was such a different war than anyone was expecting, so now how do you get out of it? but, in fact, they did just the opposite. instead of searching out compromise or lessening their demands, they actually expanded them. because if you have a quarter million casualties like the french did at the beginning of the war, but now you're into a year of the war and that account has got half a million and on its way to 1.3 million. it all has to be worth something. how do you justify that sort of slaughter and loss of treasury? your demands get bigger. and so what happens as the war went on is that the territorial demands increased. and again, it was all centered -- the map of europe wasn't going to change very much. france was going to grab back to provinces the germans had taken from them in the war in 1870. but the map of europe was not --

if they won there were not going to occupy germany. they would get war reparations but it was like germany was going to disappear from the map. the part of the map that could be carved up was the middle east. the reason that was, was because, in a case of really awful decision-making, the ottoman empire came into the war on the side of germany, on the side of the central powers. about three months after the war had started. so if germany and austria hungry one, germany, they would economically dominate the middle east after the war. if britain and france when the war and russia, the triple, they were going to carve up the entire region. and as soon as the ottoman empire into the war, the british foreign office or start referring to euphemism for ottoman empire was the great dilute.

that's what it was going to become just a looting is going to happen after the war. -- great looting. >> i just wanted to talk about what the ottoman empire was like. and again, the ottoman empire existed for five centuries and even over the previous entry it had been being nibbled away at. one of, probably the unique feature of the ottoman empire and the key to its surviving, economically, politically and military had always been we, in comparison any of the european powers, they have a system called -- it gave incredible amount of autonomy the local ethnic tribal religious groups. to be part of the ottoman empire, really all you had to do was pay taxes and answer

conscription rates of the ottoman army. as long as you do that you would be pretty much left alone. so what you had across the ottoman empire were very strong tribes and clans fiefdoms. you had a huge are many population. you had a small jewish population in palestine. catholics in serious and huge catholic population. it was this great polyglot empire and far more so than any of the european empires. in 1908, but it is also very decrepit and it was falling apart. the sultan of the ottoman empire was five it is a corrupt. in 1908, six years before world war i, a group of young progressive military officers who became known as the young turks basically overthrew the

sultan. they kept him on as figurehead but they became the de facto power of the ottoman empire. they had three main issues, ideas, kind of place of how to appeal to this fast and very desperate empire. there was going to be a renaissance of islam. the second was this renaissance of the. people, the ethnic turks being in turkey and central asia. and the third idea of this, bringing the ottoman empire into the 20th century through emancipating women, freeing slaves but there was still slavery and main parts of the ottoman empire, especially arabi. the problem with these thread is is when you have such a polyglot empire is that if it was designed everybody, every component of the empire would have something that would draw

them to it, would be attracted to it. they actually give everybody something to fear. over half the population of the ottoman empire wasn't turkish, so this idea of this kind of rise of turkish nationalism was going to have any appeal to the arabs, arab population. the renaissance of islam also very frightening to the armenian christians and to the syrian catholics. and as far as, most inevitably for our story, this idea bring the ottoman empire into the 20th century was equal to really conservative elements that basically wanted the region to stay in the 14th century it and specifically with this was -- i don't think it's on this map but is basically western saudi arabia. border along the red sea.

in 1913 as the ottomans continually tried to bring him into line, he sent his son, had four sons, his son named abdullah, he sent to cairo where he met with the british governor general, who will come back up any minute. abdullah basely what with the british do if he had jobs he arabs went into revolt against the ottoman empire? kitchener just blew him off because the war hadn't started. the british had good relations with the ottomans and so he just sent him packing on his way. when world war i started, kitchener who is now the minister of war for the british comedy remembered his conversation with abdullah and

the sent a message to hussein, his father basically saying, what will it take for you to join our side? and what proceeded to have it was a long negotiating -- negotiation over about a year between the man to replace kitchener, mcmahon as governor jindal in egypt, and king hussein, to try to get the arabs in arabia to revolt and culminated in this correspondence back and forth which is called the mcmahon hussein correspondence. ibut it culminated in october 1915 with an agreement where the british basically recognized independence for virtually the entire arab world. with the exception of that they wanted, they had discovered in basra in present-day iraq, so they want to basically lease a portion of what is today iraq. and an area north of lebanon

now, along the coast which they had said is not primarily arab, it's very mixed, there's a huge christian population there. so they excluded that from the agreement, but virtually everything else was going to be an independent arab nation. the british had done this without ever consulting their chief allies, france and russia. so when they made a deal with hussein, the british thought, you know, maybe we should have checked with allies and see how they feel about this. one man in particular, a slide i'll show in a minute, a man named markus seitz was sent to meet with the french diplomats and just to kind of sound that what the french might want. in the middle east. as it turned out the french basically wanted everything. they wanted what is today syria, lebanon, iraq, israel and

jordan. they wanted everything. what ensued was discussions between mark seitz and his french counterpart, george tito, where they basically, they decided to divide up the region between themselves. and this gets to the core historical controversy that continues to plague the region today. the difference between the promises made to the arabs in the mcmahon-hussein correspondence and then the imperial dividing up of within the cites agreement. out of the british get away with a? they got away with it because they never told hussein about the cites agreement has never told the french about the mcmahon-hussein corresponds. they very carefully have these

walls of separation so no one, once i'd wouldn't find out about the other. and the man who brought it to an end was t. e. lawrence, better known to the world as lawrence of arabia. so i'm not going to toggle the about lawrence, and if i could remember how to do this, i have a few slides i was going to show you. hang on. what am i doing? there we go. that's lawrence on -- okay, i think i'm set now. all right. that's lawrence on the far left. why does he keep doing that? i think i should say no.

lawrence was, in this picture is 28. as a young, he was educated at oxford. as an archaeologist. and in 1909, he was fascinated by medieval european history, especially military history. in 1909, the age of 19, he went as part of his thesis at oxford he went to syria, and on his own, nobody with them, walked 1200 miles across syria making a tour of all the crusader castl castles. and that begin this fascination, lifelong fascination he had with the arab world. and specifically with syria. a couple of years later, he came back to syria as an archaeological dig for the

british museum and he spent most of the 45 years leading up to the war in this area. it's a neolithic ruins right on the syrian and turkish border today. during that time he developed, he only had an incident for every culture literally studied in a way that very few westerners of the time had. the workmen on the archaeological site, he would ask them about their families and about their plans and he would take notes of what they were saying. so he really came to appreciate the way arab society worked, in a way that was quite unique for a westerner at the time. when the war came along, he was actually on a break from this archaeological dig and he was back in england. the war broke out. he was actually too short, 5'3",

he was too short to enlist in the army so in the initial days of the war, and this was before the ottomans had come into the war. he just took a job as -- he was quite an expert cartography switch a good job in the mapping department of the british military headquarters. a great story of how he actually became a military officer is that one day, a senior general who was going off and going to be a command in one part of the western front in belgium, came into the mapping the city wanted to see the up-to-date maps of the battlefront. the only person there was lawrence he was a civilian. and the general was outraged that is going to be briefed by a civilian. he demanded to be breached by an officer. lawrence was the only one of their, so lawrence was bustled off to the army navy store to get a uniform. he was made a second lieutenant. so that's how he joined the

british military. a couple months later, the ottomans came into the war on the side of germany, austria-hungary. and lawrence was brought on as, he was taken to cairo to work for the military intelligence officers of the british army there. for the next two years, he basically sat behind a desk in cairo, argued again and again with position papers of what should be done in the arab world. more often than not, he was ignored. in the summer and june of 1916, the arab revolt finally started. and four months later, almost as a lark, lawrence accompanied a british, a political agent who

was the main liaison between the british and cairo and hussein in arabia. lawrence accompanied them. he took a leave from his best job and he went over to get a, the main coastal city in arabia. he instantly, and largely through just his own cunning, managed to make himself a key liaison to the arab rebels. he specifically attached himself to one of hussein's other sons, faisal. let me see if i can -- this is kind of a landscape of where the fighting was taking place. this is in southern jordan but it just want to jump forward to show you -- that's faisal.

fisa was hussein's third son, and he was one of the chief battlefield commanders in the field. violate october 1960 when they first met, the revolt had really stagnated. they had control of mecca and the coastal city outside of mecca and a few coastal towns. but they really had nothing, they had no weaponry, no tactics to fight against the turks. and what a lawrence did over the next several months was he attached himself to faisal, and he decided that faisal was the true, the prophet of war. he was the true arab rebel commander. and rather anointed him as a fat.

one thing how lawrence stood apart from the few other british officers who were on the arabian coast at the time, beyond his knowledge of arab culture and spoke arabic. he was fluent but he did have a very good accent. but because he had studied medieval military history, not so much at the time of the crusades but military history of europe, the wars in europe in the 14th century were actually very similar to how a war was going to have to be waged in arabia. war is most primal. you're going back to what decide who you attack and when you attack and where, depends on where there's water. depends on forage for your annual. it depends on your escape route. so this very basic stuff that was concerned in the 14th century in europe, but were 2010

centuries turns in arabia. lawrence understood that about how to wage war there in a way that a true british officer who was trained in modern military tactics just really couldn't have grasped. he was uniquely suited for this kind of war. but what he also did, and what cemented the alliance between lawrence and faisal, was he told faisal about the sykes pico agreement. agreement. agreement. at the time you don't been in arabia for about three months. and basically committed an act of treason i, i mean, you pass a military secret to a third party in wartime, that's almost the very definition of treasontime,e very definition of treason. but he did it, well, i think, you can debate why he did it.

on one hand i think one of his defenses was that he knew better than, he wasn't a modest guy. he was rather arrogant, that he had a better idea of what the british needed to do in the middle east than the british government sending in london. and their idea of partitioning with the french, the region after the war, was going to lead to disaster. it could also have been this -- lawrence had always been fascinated with king arthur's court and the medieval pageantry. and they could've been that he just saw himself that he saw the chance to be this kind of knight errant and to deliver these people their freedom. but so he told, he told faisal about the existence of this treaty. and basically what he said was don't believe in the promises of my country. because as things stand now we are going to betray you.

if the answer going to get anything at the end of the war you are going to have to fight for. you have to fight for every step of the way. for the next year and a half, lawrence led to was one of the leaders of the arab rebels into battle. and while faisal knew about the sykes-picot treaty, no one else did. so lawrence increasingly felt this incredible moral conflict between the men he was recruiting to fight for him and die for him, were most likely they're going to be betrayed in the end. and as the war went on, he became more and more -- i don't know -- embittered, shattered. he called himself a charlatan, a fraud, because he was getting people to fight and die for a cause that he knew was a lie.

this was -- lawrence was also a pretty amazing photographer. this was a photo he took when he first got to arabia, and it's of the rebel camp in the early morning. this was going to show -- this was the rebel army on the move. you can't see it, but kind of right at the center is faisal leaving the army and lawrence was standing up on a little hill taking the picture. what both faisal and lawrence were also really brilliant at once understanding that to wage this -- because of the clan and tribal structure of war, well, just society in arabia, to wage war, it was this very complicated and very delicate

negotiation process where you went to individual sheikhs and asked them for a certain number of men to fight. it was all very localized, because each time they would go to a different region of arabia, lawrence would have to recruit a new army because of this feud and the blood vendetta is that when a between different tribes and different clans. all sorts of tribesmen couldn't cross into another rival tribes area. or he would have to forge a peace is no temporary peace between the two tribes to get them to fight together. so again, i think, this was his experience for two years and trying to kabul together fighting forces to attack the turks. so you really understood this idea and the post war world that the brits and french were going to come in and place these people in these artificial places, plus been put under christian and western control was kind of a recipe for

disaster. one other thing that's going to point out, the three men in the white in front are actually probably slaves. they are probably faisal's. there was still slavery there at the time it. >> [inaudible] >> oh, it is okay. i'm doing badly enough for this i don't want to start doing badly at something else. this is -- right in the center, a man in white, that's faisal and this is as they're going into battle. again, this is a photo that lawrence took. so it's very kind of a medieval scene of how war took place there. and this is lawrence on a camel. one of the -- it's quite amazing to think of -- most of the arab

world were veterans. but none of them had seen airplanes before. they are terrified when the turks and germans started using airplanes. they were terrified of airplanes. they were terrified of artillery. but also most had never seen a blonde, blue-eyed men before like lawrence. so this idea that this 5'3" oxford scholar could show up and become a rebel leader, battlefield commander, is pretty astonishing. but one of the keys that enabled lawrence to do that was he had this incredible endurance. he had incredible stamina. even from his early days of his archaeological dig, the locals would talk about how he -- he had the stamina of a local. they always thought of westerners as pretty soft and weak. just through force of will, lawrence could ride a camel for 30 hours without a break.

i don't know if anyone here has been on a camel before, but i unfortunately have spent quite a bit on them. it's a very -- until you get used to it, it's like writing on a metal rod. their spine is right below the surface so it's like a metal rod and it doesn't matter how good the saddle is, you feel that rod on your spine. it's very hard. i think the longest i've been able to go without a break is about four hours. the idea of somebody doing it about 30 is pretty phenomenal. but again, andy also very quickly started wearing arab robes. so that even from a psychological standpoint i think helped the people is what to think of him as one of their own. this is mark sykes, the man who not only was the co-author of

the sykes-picot treaty but also one of the prime movers behind the second was the declaration which was to encourage jewish immigration and a palestine's, and his idea was, well, the palestinians, they'll have no problem with jews them into palestine. it will work out just fine. and again, encouraging jewish immigration into palestine at a time when, as far as king hussein and aetna, palestine had been promised to them. so, in fact, palestine was -- the british kind of promised palestine to three different people. they promised it to the arabs. they promised it to the jews, and they promised it to the french. talking about how this amazing ability of lawrence to sort of

enter the inner circle of the arab leadership. that's faisal crashing down, the highest up. and that's lawrence in the far right with the wristwatch. and so this is, and then the two slaves in the background. but he was operating inside the inner circle of the arab leadership. and this i just, i kind of put in because i just like this picture. while lawrence and the rebels under faisal were striking the railway system in arabia and doing hit-and-run raids on turkish garrisons, the main british army was waging this, very much the same or that they were waging in europe against the ottoman army. and for different huge defensive. the first for big battles in the middle east.

the british army went up against an ottoman army that the ottomans, and each one, were extremely outnumbered, underfed, had antique weapons. this is the ottoman cavalry essentially, a unit of the ottoman cavalry. but by the british insisting on these absurd frontal attack systems, the first for battles they fought they lost every time. and battles with the outnumbered the turks three to one. and again, the great equalizer of machine guns. you put underfed, underpaid, demoralized men in trenches and given machine guns, you know, it really doesn't matter what you do against them. and this was again something that lawrence was constantly arguing against. if i could figure out how to do

it, i won't try it, but i was going to go back to the map of arabia. lawrence's greatest military achievement, and it's one that is still today studied at west point, was his seizure of the town, the last turkish held down on the red sea. if you can imagine, if you can envision the sinai peninsula, is down stand at the very, at the crotch at the southeastern corner of the sinai. what was significant about this town, basically what happened, with british and naval help, the rebels would leapfrog of the arabian coast, take one turkish garrison after another. the problem with the town was that it is a small town, the

last syrian, last turkish military outpost on the red sea but anyway behind aqaba was this massive wall of mountains that extended for 60 miles. and so while the british and the arabs -- there was no problem taking aqaba, but how do you ever advanced beyond that? so you're going to be stuck on the beach and the british already had experience at tripoli when they tried to attack the mainland and suffered a quarter million casualties. so lawrence again and again counseled began to land at aqaba for the very reason. a new aqaba. yohe had been there before the war. but just knowing the ethicacy which with the british military had carried out everywhere else, the very unsuitability of doing a landing at aqaba almost made it certain that they would try. so what lawrence came up with was, was his plan to basically cut inland into the arabian desert and fall on aqaba from

behind the basically, over the mountains from behind. the turks had this -- there was this 30-mile gorge up to the top of the crest. they had blockhouses and trench works and everything. it was going to be a disaster of ever tried to climb up the gorge, but if he came out from behind, everything was pointed the wrong way. so without ever telling any british officer, lawrence snuck away with 45 followers, and went on a 600-mile camel trek, recruiting local arab fighters along the way, and felt on aqaba from behind. i don't know if any of you very seen the movie lawrence of arabia, but the capture of aqaba is kind of the centerpiece of that. it's the emotional high point of the movie. movie. it took two months, two months of crossing the desert, and all these misadventures along the

way, and they captured a aqaba. another recent -- it wasn't just a political, it wasn't just a military triumph -- sorry, i meant to say this picture, it's again a picture that lawrence took tickets of the day in the summer of 1917 when the arabs are charging into aqaba occupy it. but beyond being a military triumph, there was also a political component to capturing aqaba that a lot of people don't know about. because i could lock -- because aqaba stood at the very top of the arabian peninsula, the british and french thought -- the french were desperate because they wanted syria after the war. that one of the arab rebels to know -- they want to take syria and conventional straightahead military campaign. they want to actively keep the arab rebellion bottled up in

arabia. so by taking aqaba which was the gateway into syria, if the british and french occupied it, they could then prevent the arabs from moving on. lawrence figured this out, and it's one of the reasons why he never cleared his plan with any of his superiors because he knew if he said i had this idea of how to take aqaba, they would have vetoed it because the british and the french wanted to get there before the arabs. so this was in a way second act of -- i don't know if you -- it meets the definition of treason but basically what lawrence did was by taking aqaba was he was outflanking his own country, his own army by taking the rebels and gettin giving them their fi. and then after taking aqaba, he showed up after a six-day camel ride across the sinai peninsula. he shows up in cairo at the british military command in

cairo, barefoot, initiated. by the time he got to transport his weight was down to something like 94 pounds. and he walked into the british commander's office and says, i've just come from aqaba, i took a. again, if you've seen the movie there's a great moment where this is going to be a major military operation for the british on all these concerns, what kind of kashmir is a half, and then this 5'3" a guy shows up saying he's captured it. and from aqaba, again what lawrence did from a political standpoint is that, on the strength of this triumph, he managed to mayor of -- to marry the ever rebel cost to the british army and he managed to convince the british commander that has now advanced into syria that the arab rebels would act as their eastern component. and again, this was, this idea

that lawrence had, you are now talked bout late 1917, this is the only way to steal away syria from the french, and especially if the arabs could get to damascus first as allies of the british, then they could steal away syria, even though it had been promised to the french. so as lawrence became more and more obsessed with this idea of gettingiving the heirs to damass first, he became increasingly, well, almost, i mean, almost demonic in battle. he we go into battle what he would order like no prisoners be taken. executed wounded enemy. and it's very clear he was basically come he was kind of losing -- i put this picture in because i love this picture. this is actually the turkish

governor jindal of syria, meeting with a bunch of arab sheikhs. back then, the photography back then is so beautiful because it was done on the old glass negatives which were huge so you can just give amazing image from that time. at one point, really does want to stay there for some reason. all right, well-- anyway, now it is speeding up.

once? okay. good. that's lawrence in the middle. i talk about how he became increasingly demonic in battle. he had this horrible experience where he was captured and severely tortured by the turks, and probably raped. he only would ever refer to it as, kind of alluded to it euphemistically but is probably repeatedly raped. as we established his own bodyguards. this is lawrence standing in the middle, and he had a bodyguard of about 16 in who work to protect them. he was such a, sort of a shrewd thinker, that the men he surrounded himself were all the outcasts and the troublemakers of the different tribes aligned with the rebels. by being outcasts, he realized their primary loyalty would be

to him. and they were. and they thought to the death to protect lawrence through the end of the war. at any one time i think there was 45 or 50 men that would comprise the bodyguard but over the course of the last year in war, as members of the bodyguard i killed it would be replaced but over 60 of his bodyguards were killed i the end of the war. so in september of 1918, the british army and the arab rebels finally break through the ottoman lines, the turkish lines into syria, and they route the turks. the turks are fleeing north towards turkish heartland. lawrence and the rebels get to damascus -- well, kind of simultaneously, but technically they got to damascus first.

so again, lawrence is great hope was that by having gotten there first they would be able, they could be declared an arab government and prevent the french from taking over. this is -- this is faisal meeting with the british commander in chief of the whole war effort. this is actually a pretty amazing photo, because -- pretty amazing historic vote anyway, because today's after lawrence and faisal had reached damascus, they went into a room with only three other people at the hotel victoria in damascus, and alan

basically said the city is going to the french. so it was basically taken away from them. and in this picture, taken the same day, i find his picture, this was taken on a balcony of the hotel victoria and damascus. this is just maybe 15 minutes, and our after lawrence heard the arabs are going to be betrayed after all. and so he had spent two years getting to damascus as a battle cry for the arabs, and the same -- actually the next day, the next morning he left damascus in a british army car and he never returned. at one time he for the war

started, he had talked about how he felt syria was his new home. and he was happier in syria than he had ever been in his entire life. and so with this expense he actually never ever came back. and what he did was he went to the paris peace conference. he went as a liaison. that's lawrence just third from the right and faisal in the center. and he went as an advisor to faisal. at paris, first tried to appeal to the british government to stand by their word that they promised the arabs. that didn't work. he actually cut a deal with the head of the british zionist movement, because he recognize the balfour declaration was

taken away. and told me would lead to the jewish state. he realized that the balfour declaration wa was in complete. so what he has been do was meet and they made an agreement between the jews and arabs that in return for recognizing jewish primacy in palestine, the zionists would defend the arabs rights to claim france. that didn't work. then finally what they tried to do was to appeal to the americans. woodrow wilson had shown up in pairs with all of this talk of the age of imperialism was over, the age of secret deals was over. and talking about the rights of self-determination for people. and, unfortunately, it turned out it was mostly just talk.

right towards -- as a way to kind of try to short circuit the british and french deal for dividing up the middle is, wilson sent this fact-finding commission. the great solution, let's form a committee. so we formed a committee that went to the middle east to find out what the people -- the actual natives wanted. and so they said this, they went out and spent three months pulling people throughout syria and lebanon and palestine of what they wanted. and across the entire spectrum of populations, christians, arabs, jews, sunni, shia, nobody wanted either the british or the french. big surprise. they wanted either independence or they wanted them if they couldn't independence they wanted an american protected. they wanted an american mandate.

but by the time the commission got back to paris with this news, wilson was a spent force. and now he was trying to get through his leg of nation's idea through a very stubborn congress to plus innovate any idea that you want to do -- he certainly didn't want america to become the governor force of the middle east. so the king crane commission report that outlined all this was super locked away in a vault. it wasn't seen by anybody for three years, by which time the division of middle east had gone forward. the british and french dividing it, what happened at paris with a lawrence was he kept fighting to try to get his government to stand beside the promising to file to the point where lawrence became a problem for the british

government and he was simply stripped of any role at the peace talks, and made, just place in barracks. and actually he was in the military, forbidden to have any contact with faisal. what happened almost instantly throughout the middle east with the partitions, the place started to blow apart. it was pretty much all carved out in 1919. by 1920, there was a full-scale revolt and iraq. there were independence riots in egypt. jewish settlers were being attacked in palestine. there was war in syria against the french occupation. and over the decades since, what

you -- i think there's one more. okay, this was the four big leaders at paris. so basically what has happened is before wilson got to paris, the british prime minister on the far left, and then george, second to the right, they had reaffirmed between the two them, and a five minute conversation they basically said, okay, what do you want? and clemens answered first and he said what he wanted from the region, and then he asked lloyd george what he wanted, and basically he said done. basically they made a deal they were going to stand by each other and shoot down wilson's ideas. this was one of the last pictures of lawrence that was taken in i believe december of

1934. for a couple of years after the war he tried to stand by what -- he was involved in a bit and trying to emulate decisions that were made in the middle east. and then he rejoined -- he wrote his great memoirs but he changed his name and rejoined the british military as a private it it's interesting, by the time the war was over he was a lieutenant colonel, and yet he insisted on reenlisting as a private. and again, under an assumed name. it was like he wanted to disappear. and he spent most of the rest of his life as a recluse. it's clear he had today what we call ptsd. at the time was called shell shock. he had bouts of depression what he would contemplate suicide,

and lived, and finally had -- he was one of the most famous men and, certainly in england in the postwar, and yet he just, he bought a little cottage down on the southwest coast of england. when he was away from the barracks he would hole up there and read books and stuff. this picture was taken about four months before he died. he was just leaving the military at this point, so he was 46. and when he finally left the military, he wrote a note in may 1935 to a friend saying, i'm economy was really quite nervous how he's going to spend the rest of his life. and he said, he said, i feel like the way a lease must feel when it falls from the tree and is waiting to die. and he said, i hope this isn't my permit condition.

and then a week later after that note he had a motorcycle accident and was killed. oh, and the very last photo. this is actually a photo from -- it's taken two years ago in arabia. this is one of the trains that lawrence blew up out in the desert. so just to kind of wrap things up. you know, having spent so much time in the middle east over the past 20 years, and thinking of how, not just how you can treat, you can trace the historical or political line of what's happening there today back to this time, but i think there's also an element of the personality of the place. that i think what's happened

ever since the partitions that took place at the end of the war is that the arab world has tended to always see itself in terms of what it is supposed to. anti-israel obviously but anti-zionist, anti-western, and anti-western can take so many different forms, whether it's western music playing on the streets of cairo or women uncovered. and i think that so much of this collision course that we have seen play out, certainly in our lifetime and order, stems from this philosophical -- philosophical is maybe not the right word but this mindset that is really come to exist in that part of the world ever since that time.

i mean, the last thing i was going to say is come here, ma i feel what we are seeing now, and i wasn't even, six month ago i don't think it occurred to me but we were -- when we look at these today and now what's happening in syria, but also what's already happened in libya, what's already happened in iraq is what we are now seeing is the final disintegration of these borders that were created almost 100 years ago. iraq today, even though i know no one in the american government will admit it because the idea we still somehow liberated iraq and put on the path to something, iraq today is essentially three countries. ..

[applause] >> thank you. [inaudible] [inaudible]

>> a good question. actually, the autumn and empower country empire, a component detouring. jamal posthumus is still on treadmill francophiles. he loved everything about it for a period that summer of 1914, he actually went to france and try to get the french to accept the ottoman empire as an ally in the french just brush them off. it's a really good question. it's a great audience of what would've happened. i often wonder if the ottomans just date out of it, what would've happened to the. i was talking about the vignette system the ottomans used in the safety of of one of the weirdest

things that the ottoman empire was its very lack of cohesion, its lack of any central authority. and i think they just giving maternity and the change in communication, to change the interaction between, railroads, should, airplanes had just started. the world is rapidly becoming a small police. i have to think it's almost at to cover the ottoman empire did. they were headed for serious trouble in the near future as their different component parts of their prayer came into increasing contact with each other. it's kind of a pessimistic view of human behavior. coming out of contact, also coming into collision. i think almost anything the ottoman state, the days were kind of number. if they had joined, you know, at

the very least that you might have seen in the middle east who says he ottoman empire broke up with the nations created in its place would have some logic to them. but has some ethnic or religious logic to tab rather than just joined together because that is what the european mapmakers, the lines feature. yeah. >> high, i'm lisa finkelstein. i was wondering if you could comment on your analysis of the situation now and if there is any of the 10 arab nationalism that still exist but was promoted by a-alpha todd back in world war i and if that is something there are still large sacks of arab, if a lot of arabs

are so wanted something like that cover one of the massive arab nation as opposed to put enough into sick carrion divides. >> yes, i think there is a figment of the population out there, this idea of paying arabism may think is really quite strong. i have to say my first real experience ice but what of time in cairo, in 06, 07 monday for an iraq was particularly bloody. it's become particularly bloody again, but we don't read about it anymore. i remember talking to egyptians and they would talk about what has happened in iraq the day before bombing had killed 87 people or whatever. it is very interesting. it was as if it happened in a chip. i mean, it was clear they had

this personal connection, even though they were egyptians. they had this personal connection to what was happening in iraq. i do think it goes to this notion of this pan arab identity. i've never seen it in another part of the world. the something awful happens in brazil, there's not a lot of warning about it in columbia or something in romania and in part. so there is, i think identity. is it powerful enough to span all the forces against, advocating separation. what you are seeing over and over again and set terry and lines i suppose if the later

came along as they could produce a kind of nonsearch i peered it would be interesting if that could kind of spam the forces of disintegration happening everywhere. [inaudible] [inaudible]

>> or the end of world war i, even when the americans went into the war, the american old for by a pretty woman after a significant majority going into the war. by the time the war was over, the americans -- both in safety at the americans could not take on this international referee role from the beginning. certainly in congress and had a very hostile congress, which he hoped to make even more hostile because he was a completely uncompromising and rather convict this man. the idea of standard oil acting as a force to save the american need to have a larger role in the world. i think there was a tidal wave

of returning to isolationism. i think the benefits are not readily apparent to americans at the time. you always think about oil, but even by world war i companies see the handwriting on the wall about oil would become. it wasn't this strategic commodity that was going to utterly change the world. it was coming, but i think the americans were just behind the times of what was coming. >> hi, my name is max. thanks for coming here. i wonder if you could elaborate on the french syrian relationship, why the french were so keen about claiming syria as their protector and why not other areas in the middle

east. going >> going back to the 15th century, if i mention there's a really large christian population, orthodox christians in their own church. they're outside than the fact there was russia. for the captives and the maronite syrian lebanon today been a part of the greater syria nighttime. the french extracted from the ottoman empire, a series of things called capitulations for the french were actually acted as the guarantors of the freedoms that the christian population ottoman empire. once the french established a system, other european powers demanded and got from the

ottoman this whole system, which was just a bizarre system. sorry. if you committed a crime, if you were a bridge or frenchman in syria and committed a crime, you could be tried by turkish court. you would only be tried by your country. so it made for nurse within the ottoman empire, i mean, kind of the opposite of untouchable. this superclass that could never be -- like a kind of do whatever they wanted. because the french have this special status and i think that's why they saw syria and one of the crowns they wanted to

grab. some of the crusades had originated in france. seven years later, but it's got this place back from the muslims. it is a big part of why special in palestine before they wanted to grab that area. also contributing so much to does the massacres of the armenians during the war. that helps to have this idea that christians are safe. however you want to make it as propaganda by these countries needed to be taken away from the ottomans, that christians should never again be said that due to the risk in the ottoman muslim world. >> my question is whether you

could offer some in a bid to what cysteine -- [inaudible] today it's highlighted in the book at its very unique for a westerner to have a view that he had been ingesting kind of the background of why that was. >> yeah, it is always a great mystery why a person develops a method may be for a different culture. you know, i don't how much you love travel, but you need people like this all around the world, from all different backgrounds and all of a sudden they go to tibet or they go to india or guatemala or something and they have this -- i'm not even sure they can ask you what it is, but they have this and in connection and identity to a place in almost kind of advanced and understanding of the way that

site works, where to most outsiders they could seem very exotic and punishable. there are these people who -- i don't know if it's reincarnation or whatever. it's like they just seem to know why. i think lawrence was like that because it's interesting, there is this personality because in fact his personality was so non-arab. he had this revulsion of being touched. he would avoid shaking hands. he hates being touched or embraced or anything. then to go to arab culture is incredibly fiscal. men always kissing and holding hands in hiking and everything. also at that time, deals could go on for four or five hours and they reveal these people sitting in a room. this is how armies were recruited in how decisions were made aware to attack next.

and lawrence was said these meanings for five hours. but this remake guy who prior to that prided himself on the fact he would only eat standing up and he prided himself he did a whole mail in like three minutes. so it's like how did that person then become a guy lounging around on iraq for five hours? i don't really know the answer. yeah. >> my name is roland. you talk about other characters in the whole middle eastern, and i was wondering, what true you to the specific errors in the events they played? >> i got this idea i want to read a book about lies because i was fascinated by him. there's been so many books do, at least 70 over the years. but i didn't want to do is just

kind of rehash what everybody else had done because even from a research standpoint, after so many books, based not much new to be discovered. in fact, nothing new about lawrence. you're not going to go to the national archives in london and stumble across some trove of lawrence papers that no one has seen before. but i also got thinking that is how do i expand the canvas? and then i had this epiphany about lawrence of why he was able to do what he did in the middle east. it really is -- it's a central rental of florence's existence. how did a 28-year-old oxford scholar go off to a a then become this battlefield commander of a foreign bible army. part of the answer i realized was while he was able to do it because no one was paying much attention, but reddish focus,

french focuses the western front. that's her 99% of the money casualties as the next minute. so if this guy could go off and cause problems for the turkish enemy and arabia and didn't require much, great. and now, go do it. kinder from the realization about lawrence i thought if that was true about the british were by far the biggest imperial players in the region, it's been true about the other umpires also. i started looking around and i found proof two years older or three years older than lawrence, who had been attached to the german embassy in cairo for years and then becomes the head of determining counterintelligence at the spymaster in syria during the war. the jewish agronomists. i love the idea that so much of the history -- i don't know if

the middle east is unique in this. what fascinated me about this. his massive things happen. massive change came to this part of the world. so much was put into effect the people who without titles, without positions, junior officers, jewish agronomists, people but by force of personality and four so well can't get themselves a role on this stage were dramatic things were happening and helped bring about change. it wasn't generals. it was the kings. it was guys in their 20s and 30s. [inaudible] >> in the book and also just not come you attribute much of the success to cultural familiarity

in the region and travel structure. out of curiosity, have you seen that my mom was an conducted foreign policy in a different part of the world are a different point in time? >> and sorry, i meant stories began. >> well, have you seen any similar novels of the assertive -- [inaudible] >> sure. i think it's always the question of i think that if you went to almost any. can you would find people. if you went to vietnam, there were americans to vietnam, who in the 50s and 60s were warning the kennedy administration, certainly warning the johnson administration of the disaster that was going to happen if the americans continued doing what they were doing or what they were thinking of doing. i mean, i think there's always

people who have a grasp of a place and it's always a question of did they just get overwhelmed by the warthogs were the imperialist? just the masses and avoids. and novak, the war in iraq in a three-way bout of people that were in the bush administration, that the american soldiers are not going to be greeted as liberators and that coming into this country, they seem to line you break it, you own it, they getting rid of saddam hussein that the subtropical forests in this country that had been kept together largely through terror as the interviewer is saying, the forces disintegration were going to take over. i don't think the people who said that he and he knew that -- i don't think either the hearing

from the bush administration. people who knew iraq did that. there's always people out there who do. yeah. sorry. >> hi. [inaudible] as just wondering, you can't inherit the lawrence the kingmaker of arabia. i was just wondering how different you think the situation would've been in terms of the middle east had he not glad and instead taken in the initial part of the resolution? >> of lawrence had? sorry, if you had taken the

reins? >> if lawrence had taken? >> i don't think it ever would've worked. he was never about -- he never had ideas of himself becoming, you know, a leader of the arabs. i think he always had to be some arab leader that was going to unite them and overcome the sectarian divide. sorry. yeah, i think it was always an open question at the end whether faisal -- it is not me, he didn't have great regard for faisal at the military commander, but he did as this conciliator, somebody who could bring tribes together. but yeah, i don't think he ever sort of imagined himself having a larger robot the arabs had to.

>> we are going to first of all think c-span for their presence here. thanks for this first portion of things. >> from book tvs recent visit to montana, crow indian poet, henry real bird provides the importance of preserving indian history. these back >> in the wind, that feeling will begin, life, liberty, death, democracy and the jewel in soil in the heart of our soul. from the baath waters, steel waters, tears of war, joy, victory covered, we are pleased

in the middle of lodges that are different for them to make us become pressing and that will never come. so go ahead, hit the secret drone. we have sent our step into prosperity to the yesterday dance into obscurity. all of us, where we come from our one. multi-race in america. we just want to live in peace. i thought celica going there, we started out from the earth lodge over of the big river, missouri river and watched it the yellowstone river with the wolf dogs. we were a family. but they keep through here, we were with them. pompey's pillar is will they call it a lodge, where the mountain lion said.

so since the inception of white people, we worked along with them because in santa cruz train, there is a hole in the ground and the buffalo swirled and went in not on the ground and became nothing. and out of that hole came buffalo cattle and a little bit from when the sun comes out in the ground that the sky. wagons come out. we knew that this life we know of following the buffalo was going to and that we lived with these people come and these people that are coming. so that's how we ended up being a peaceful tribe